Sharing Family Traditions with Your Children

Family traditions are a significant means of maintaining close bonds, building familial connections, and preserving culture and heritage . That being said, families grow and change over time, and your traditions should as well. If you become mired in tradition for tradition’s sake, you can quickly lose the benefit of those traditions in the first place. By understanding and acknowledging the underlying purpose or reason for the tradition, you can easily pivot to create a new way of celebrating that tradition that is still in keeping with the underlying benefits.

Every year, millions of families get together on Thanksgiving. When a global pandemic came along, that interrupted this tradition for millions of families. Those who understood the tradition’s intent rolled with the punches and came up with new ways to celebrate. Many others sank into a deep depression due to the inability to celebrate the tradition as they always had.

While there is nothing wrong with passing on time-honored traditions to your children , and there is great benefit in doing so, you don’t want to pass on an inability to be flexible. There will always be twists and turns in life that can keep us from celebrating, in the same way, every year. If we get mired in the belief that everything has to be exactly the same or it will lose its value entirely, you can create more of a nightmare for your children than a fairy tale.

For instance, traditional family recipes can sometimes be time-consuming to prepare, creating a great deal of stress during busy holiday seasons. If you recognize that the benefit of preparing that recipe is to pass it on to your children, then you can prepare something less time-consuming during the holidays and wait to prepare the family recipe with your children during a less busy time. After all, if preparing the recipe causes you stress, it is unlikely to be an enjoyable experience for your children anyway.

Originally published at https://dredwardthalheimer.co.